The Hallmark Channel started their Christmas season last Saturday with 24 hours of Christmas movies and specials running through December 25th. It's been well publicized that I'm inexplicably dreading the holiday/my birthday season this year so I wanted to get out ahead of my humbuggery and try to capture some Christmas Spirit. I thought I'd test drive the Hallmark Christmas movies to manage the job.
Oy!
I can put up with a LOT of sap. I will tolerate MANY plot manipulations. And, I can't see a twist in the story line coming even if it's spelled out in the subtitles. But, Hallmark is asking a great deal of my easy-to-entertain nature.
Here are a few of the things that go on in Hallmark ChristmasWorld that don't actually occur anywhere else in the universe:
1) There are a disproportionate number of orphans and young widows living in quaint little U.S. towns.
2) Christmas Eve at midnight is the favorite time for greedy landlords to foreclose on the local Community Center or Senior Living Home.
3) Banks and lending institutions are conveniently open until 11:59pm on December 24th, ready to accept last minute payments of money to save a property from foreclosure.
4) At Christmastime, all towns will contain an assortment of the following:
o a lovely and overworked young widow,
o a Christmas curmudgeon,
o a judgmental and criticizing neighbor who makes nice people feel inadequate,
o a charlatan out to take advantage of people at Christmas,
o a workaholic executive who doesn’t know how to slow down and put family first at the holidays,
o a precocious little boy who desperately needs a good father figure in his life,
o someone who believes in Christmas Magic,
o a young and handsome bachelor who seems to be the only one that realizes the lonely woman in town actually looks like a super model,
o an eccentric drifter who causes the townspeople to rethink their ways,
o a country music singer
5) Single parent families have amazingly lavish and well decorated homes.
6) Children with no father and a mother who works 12 hours daily turn out to be very well adjusted.
7) Gorgeous women with lush hair, nose jobs and augmentation surgery work exclusively in soup kitchens.
8) Orphans are available for adoption at any time. If, for instance, you should decide on Christmas morning that you’d like to adopt a particular orphan, no paperwork or formalities are required other than you announcing your intentions to the child around the Christmas tree. No government officials will need to have an opinion about this. The child may begin living with you immediately. Orphans are instantly in love with any family that will take them in.
9) Single people love to host large holiday meals even though they have no idea how to cook.
10) Really attractive people are far more selfless and generous than unattractive people.
11) Most people prefer to do their Christmas shopping after work on December 24th. All stores in town are open in anticipation of this.
12) Any person who decides to *change their ways* on Christmas Day will remain permanently changed and never again be tempted to act or think as they have in the past.
That being said, I still plan to watch the Hallmark Christmas movies. I will do this because I have hope that one of them will put me in the mood for Christmas. Also, every so often I will watch one that's pretty nice. And, finally, I will continue to watch because I don't think this list is long enough yet.
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